On Alton Sterling and why I will always film police interactions with people of color

A couple days ago I posted about why I will always film any police interactions with people of color. I had witnessed a black man getting arrested down the street from our house. The police were kind and respectful, and very careful as they put him into the car. But I filmed the entire interaction anyway. And will always film. I will hope for the best and assume, as these guys were, that police officers will act with integrity. But until our country’s issues with unnecessary police violence against black men is a thing of the distant past, I will film. Any time I witness police interaction with black men or women I will film, and God forbid my boys ever have such an interaction I hope someone will film for them. And I will hope that, like this instance, it’s uneventful footage that never makes the news. Just two days after that post, there was another senseless killing of a black man by the police, that was a devastating reminder of why citizens need to record such interactions. And had it not been recorded by a bystander, the truth may never have been seen. But the video makes it clear that this man was tackled and lying on the ground pinned by officers, and yet was still shot at point blank range, first twice, and then four more times . . . execution-style. The footage captureed by two bystanders is disturbing and damning. My post about filming the police was met with offense by many. One person simply responded with an eyeroll emoji. Because apparently talking about unnecessary death is just annoying and grating for some people. It must be nice to not have to consider the implications of these patterns on the safety of your own children. However, for many of us, watching these killings on repeat grips us with terror, because we wonder about the safety of our own loved ones. In the wake of Alton Sterling’s death, we are now being bombared with character assassinations of this man, as if this information somehow has any bearing on the police behavior that night. His criminal record was not a known factor that night. One of the things that I found most profoundly disturbing in the case of Trayvon Martin was the way people assassinated his character as if some found defects were proof that his death was justified. I feel like every time these stories emerge, I get the initial wave of fear and sadness, thinking about my own sons and the world they have to navigate. God forbid they engage in pot-smoking or shoplifting or talking back to adults as teenagers – behaviors I myself did in high school – because for them, it might be the thing that someone cites as an excuse for being shot. But then, to compound those feelings of grief, I also have to deal with round 2: the anger that emerges when our society, and oftentimes our justice system, fails to acknowledge the problem. When police officers are not held accountable. When excuses are made. When I’m told, repeatedly, that this isn’t about race. When moms of black boys are viewed as too paranoid or too sensitive or too “obsessed with race.” I believe this is the root of much of the racial bias. I believe that we live in a country in which black people have been systematically dehumanized . . . and I believe we are still living in that legacy. (This reality is well documented in the book The Condemnation of Blackness.) But you don’t have to believe my opinion. Nor do you have to believe the anecdotal opinion of African Americans (though you should – because they are the only people who can speak with authority on the experience of black Americans.) The bias inherent in law enforcement has been well documented with empirical research as well. In repeated psychological tests conducted by the psychology department at the University of Colorado, researchers illustrated the implicit suspicions people hold against people of color:

Participants shoot an armed target more quickly and more often when that target is Black, rather than White. However, participants decide not to shoot an unarmed target more quickly and more often when the target is White, rather than Black. In essence, participants seem to process stereotype-consistent targets (armed Blacks and unarmed Whites) more easily than counterstereotypic targets (unarmed Blacks and armed Whites).